Tag Archives: Wexford

This is a story of a success, a surprise discovery and the hazards of not paying enough attention or making assumptions. Oh to be in Ireland where it’s possible to check the primary records!

Photo by Ingo Mehling, 2010. from Wikimedia Commons.

THE SUCCESS

I’m a great fan of ensuring I have family certificates and I used birthdays etc to gain a good repertoire of my key family certificates. Somehow I’d missed getting Mary Callaghan McSherry’s…who knows why. Thanks to the new Queensland online BDM search and online ordering I was able to rectify that yesterday for a mere $20. In a matter of a minute there it was to review. Bingo!! There was the proof I needed: her father was indeed David Callaghan, a fisherman, as I knew from her marriage in Gorey, but it also states that she was born in Courtown Harbour. This confirms that the David Callaghan I’d hypothesised as her father is the correct one, though I still want/need to see the baptism registers.

THE SURPRISE

I alluded to this in my earlier post. I’d done a google search using the words: Callaghan fisherman Courtown Wexford. To my surprise up popped a book extract which was something of an eye-popper. Margaret Callaghan, daughter of Edward Callaghan (who in turn is said to be the brother of John and David fishermen in Courtown), turned out to be the wife of Ace of Spies, the true story of Sidney Reilly. The book by Andrew Cook is available as an e-book so of course I couldn’t resist buying it to see more detail. My good fortune is that it also includes detailed footnotes on the Callaghan family, some of which I’ve been able to cross-check using Family Search and FindMyPast (world) (FMP). Other aspects I’ve been unable to verify eg Margaret has eluded me in the 1891 English census.

Critically the book’s footnotes identify Edward Callaghan’s place of birth in the parish of Ballygarrett, just a short distance from Courtown. Why is this important? Because at least one of my DNA matches has traced his family to the same parish, but our match is too strong for this to be “identical by state.” The book also identifies Edward’s parents as John and Elisa Callaghan[i] so tentatively they would also be the parents of our David.

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS (make an ass out of me)

The report on the drowing of Patrick Callaghan of Courtown. Might this have been Kate’s husband? Freeman’s Journal 26 February 1894. According to the Irish Deaths Index he was 33 years old, est YOB 1861.

Error 1: I had stupidly blipped over the marital status of David Callaghan’s family in the Household Returns for the 1901 census. Kate Callaghan was not David junior’s wife, she was a widow and he was unmarried. As yet we don’t know which of David Callaghan senior’s sons she had married. I have now edited my previous post to correct this.

Error 2 was assuming that the Anne Callaghan on the Griffith Valuations may have been David and John’s mother whereas in fact it may be that John Callaghan, also living in the Oughton houses may be the correct ancestor.

An assumption, in my head at least, was that Anne Callaghan who was admitted to Wexford Gaol for stealing a chemise may have been the same one as on the Griffith Valuations. This may be the case, but she may also be the wife of David Callaghan as we can see from the birth entries identified below. She was 45 in 1877, suggesting an estimated year of birth of 1832. She could be a sister of David Callaghan (est YOB 1834) or his wife, or an unknown relation or even sister-in-law but not his mother because of her age.

Where to from here and what can be done from Australia?

Action: Order in the microfilms of the Ardamine, Wexford valuation lists so I can trace the change of ownership of the two houses held by John Callaghan and Anne Callaghan in 1853. This might clarify the lines of descent, and correlate deaths with the transfer of occupation.

From the census: David Callaghan, a fisherman, 67 years old, Roman Catholic and illiterate. Living with him is his daughter Bridget, aged 33; his son, also David, aged 27 and a fisherman, David senior’s daughter-in-law Kate, aged 33 and their son David #3, aged 7.

Courtown Harbour at 11am on 3 December 1989. Photograph by P Cass.

I’ve come up with the following which remain conjecture until seeing the full detail on either baptism/birth/marriage/death registers.

One thing that is explained by the Callaghan inheritance is why I’ve always loved fishing ports, especially ones with small boats, fishing creels and ropes. What is ironic is that no bells rang for me when I visited Courtown Harbour (why?) on 3 December 1989 with my mother and youngest daughter.

THE FAMILY OF DAVID CALLAGHAN

David Callaghan b abt 1834 possibly died 1913, aged 78 July-Sept 1913. (Still alive at 1911 census). From the Irish birth registrations, David senior’s wife’s name is Anne but no maiden name is stated.

David Callaghan #2 b 1874 born 21 April 1873 (Irish Birth Regn)[iii] and still unmarried in 1901 but in Oct-Dec 1908 he marries Mary Kinsella (vol 2, p727) and in 1911 is living at Riverchapel with his mother-in-law. Per the census enumeration, the couple have been married three years and have no children.David is now a sailor, not a fisherman.

Action: follow up his merchant navy/navy records and the marriage record. It may be David Callaghan junior who dies in 1950 aged 71 (FMP), despite the variation in his YOB.

Action: To follow up the marriage and baptisms when (??) in Ireland (the parish registers are not on Roots Ireland).

One possibility is that David Callaghan senior first went to sea with the merchant navy in 1840. Certainly there is a David Callaghan, aged 18, ticketed in 1846. He was an apprentice, from Courtown and had gone to sea as a boy. He is described as 4ft 10ins, brown hair, grey eyes, fresh complexion and no marks. What stands out for me here is the lad’s height as his daughter was quite tall but perhaps he hadn’t grown fully, or it is the wrong person, or a cousin….or….The anomaly is the variation in his year of birth.

THE FAMILY OF JOHN CALLAGHAN

The other Courtown resident in the 1901 census is John Callaghan, 62, living with his wife Catherine aged 60, sons Patrick 32 and James 23, and daughter Elizabeth Redmond 34, her husband James 35 and her daughter Mary, 9 months.

John Callaghan died 1911 (pre census) aged 71, so estimated YOB is 1840 which fits with the census. Hypothesis: he is David Callaghan senior’s younger brother and perhaps also brother to Edward (per Cook’s book)

John’s wife is Catherine Callaghan nee Cullen 60, est YOB 1841. She is still alive in 1911 but she may be the one who dies in 1936, aged 86.

Margaret Callaghan was born in the southern Irish fishing village of Courtown Harbour County Wexford on 1 January 1874 (v2 p873 FMP)[iv]. It is this Margaret who is the wife first of the Rev Hugh Thomas and subsequently of Sigmund Rosenblum aka Sidney Reilly.

One thing that bemuses me about Margaret Thomas nee Callaghan is that Cook says that in the late 1890s she’d have beentaken as an educated, cultured Englishwoman of the Victorian upper classes[v]. Frankly it bemuses me how a young woman, said to have left home at age 14, would have been able to make the transition from a somewhat knockabout life in Courtown Harbour, to that of an educated and cultured woman, let alone lose her Irish accent and replace it with an upper class English accent.

Although Margaret’s father Edward is said to be still alive in 1898 I can find no obvious trace of him in the 1901 or 1911 census records for Ireland.

CONCLUSION

Courtown Church of Ireland, 3 December 1989. All the Callaghans were Roman Catholic. The chapel at which they worshiped no longer exists.

I now have confidence that Mary Callaghan was born in Courtown Harbour and that her father was David Callaghan, a fisherman. It appears from the births of later siblings that her mother’s name was Anne. I have a hypothesis that the family of John Callaghan, living in the Oughton houses in Courtown Harbour is related, possibly her uncle, aunt and cousins.

If the relevant facts in the Ace of Spies book are correct, and it does seem very thorough, further searching should find David, John and Edward in the Ballygarrett parish registers at the National Library of Ireland. Similarly the wife of the rather infamous and inventive Sidney Reilly would be my Mary Callaghan’s cousin.

With luck, Ballygarrett research might reveal the links to other families whose DNA overlaps mine.

I am participating in the A to Z 2012 blog challenge throughout April. My theme is a genealogical travelogue or a travel genealogue (I’m not sure which).

G requires grit to get to the end!

G is for Goroka (Papua New Guinea)

Some places are larger than life and offer experiences beyond your imagination. Goroka, headquarters of the Eastern Highlands District/Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one such place. We lived there for a few years in the 1970s arriving from the tiny town of Alotau and being bedazzled by the shops and variety on offer. Before you get the wrong idea, Goroka was not a thriving urban metropolis with glittering shops…not at all, it was just that we’d become accustomed to shopping by post/catalogue, ordering food in by trawler, or shopping at one of the four trade stores in Alotau.

Nothing about Goroka was mundane or familiar to anyone who grew up elsewhere (which included me, but not my husband). When you live in PNG, you become accustomed to people wandering around almost naked: warriors in beads and loin cloths, women in beads and slightly larger loin cloths and almost always a child at the breast, men and women shiny with pig grease to keep the cold out, and smelling of smoke from living in a hut with only a tiny gap in the roof for ventilation. We had a village at the back of our government-issued house and a squatter settlement down the end of the street…anything left under the house had a habit of going walkabout. Yet strangely our vegetable patch survived untouched.

Goroka is at 1600 metres (about 5200 ft) and sits among high mountains. It has a fantastic climate: about 21C daily all year, and cool enough for blankets at night. Heaven! The local Seventh Day Adventist Mission at nearby Kabiufa grew fresh vegetables and flowers and we’d drive there each Sunday after Mass to buy up for the week. Until then I’d never eaten broccoli or cauliflower, for example, and these were miniature versions, so cute. We had a great system going where we sent fresh vegetables in an esky to my in-laws on the coast, and they sent us fresh crayfish tails in return. I can’t tell you how much our friends loved us when the flight came in, and how much we all enjoyed the delicious crayfish curry.

Goroka was accessible by road to other places via the Highlands Highway which was an adventure in itself. We drove to Lae one year with my parents, something of a challenge to our little Datsun 1200. We took day trips up to Daulo Pass or down to Lufa for a picnic: something that always drew a crowd in the Highlands..no chance of going anywhere without someone watching you. On one return drive to Daulo, we came around a corner with a small cluster of warriors running towards us, spears in hand, and “singing”, plainly intent on some stoush or other. We locked the car doors, made no eye contact and kept our fingers crossed. Mercifully they had other issues to deal with and were not interested in us. Payback is huge in PNG, over the loss of a pig, issues with women, perceived slights etc. Best not to be around when that happens!

And then there was the Goroka Show! Imagine thousands of warriors in one large football area all dressed in their specific dress-styles, armed with arrows, spears etc, all coming together in peace for a massive singsing (singing and dancing). Truly if you haven’t seen it you can’t imagine it…do click on the link above to get an idea. There was the year when there was a bit of a stoush somewhere on field and the Police let off tear gas and the crowd stampeded, knocking down the fence. Or the year when the mud at the Show came up to your ankles. Shoes were useless and you just had to hope you didn’t catch anything infectious.

Where else would you forever wonder if your beautiful cat had wound up in someone’s cooking pot or as a new hat.

Or the day the helicopter barely cleared the power lines near our “new” house to bring someone into the hospital. As they brought him out on a stretcher, he still had the spear sticking up out of him. Or the flying in general, in steep mountainous country prone to sudden cloud cover. I could go on…

In early 1974, Queen Elizabeth II came to visit Goroka, along with Prince Philip and Princess Anne and Capt Phillips and Lord Mountbatten. Nowhere else in the world would you be likely to get so close to royalty, even in those days. As I clicked and clicked, from one location to another, I swear Philip looked at me as if to say “not you again”.

PNG gained self-government in September 1974, and we were a little fearful given how bloody this event had been in many African nations in the preceding decade. Our fears were unfounded and all we heard were some rubbish-bin-lid banging (something of a local tradition) and yelling. This was great because when Independence came along a few years later we were able to fully enjoy it.

G is for Glasgow (Scotland)

I wonder just how many Aussies can trace their Scottish roots back to Glasgow, however briefly. My guess would be an enormous number because Glasgow was the transit point for those displaced from the Highlands and country areas, the source of work in the increasingly industrial age, and a point of departure by bus, train or ship.

My McCorkindale family are no different. Duncan McCorkindale left his birthplace at Cairndow on Loch Fyne, to head to Glasgow some time between 1851 (aged 9) and 1861 (aged 19). On the latter census Duncan is living in Central Glasgow (probably Albert St) and is a lodger with the family of Thomas and Elizabeth Logie (also from Argyll). He is listed as a joiner, as is Thomas Logie, which suggests to me that Duncan has already completed his apprenticeship, or perhaps was training with Thomas. In 1864 when he married his first wife, Annie Tweedie Law, he states his occupation as journeyman joiner. Over the years the family moved from pillar to post around Glasgow. It’s hard to know why this was so, perhaps just because of a growing family, perhaps to get work.

Duncan died in 1906 and in 1910, his widow and their children, one of whom was my grandmother, Catherine (whom I wrote about recently here), emigrated to Australia presumably for a better life and to rejoin their eldest sons who’d emigrated in 1900.

Until recently we’d never really spent time in Glasgow, rather using it as a transit point like so many of the emigrants. In 2010 we flew into Glasgow and prioritised having a look around. We did the tourist thing and checked out various tourist sights and took the city bus tour. By sheer coincidence there was a Glasgow heritage event, which was really interesting. This event was held in the Glasgow City Chambers and if you’re ever in Glasgow I can highly recommend taking their free tour just to see the fabulous architectural features. I’d also wanted to refer to some shipping business records in the University of Glasgow Archives tucked away in a funny little building, and fit in a visit to the Glasgow and West of Scotland Family History Society who were very helpful. Of course we also did the drive-around checking out the family’s addresses, learned from certificates and censuses. Many of the buildings were no longer standing, demolished and replaced by new businesses, but we did manage to find two of their homes. As always, never enough time, including the opportunity to visit the Mitchell Library, and I wish for a longer visit in the future when we can hopefully afford to stay in the same fabulous B&B…the perfect antidote to jetlag…thank heavens for a strong Aussie dollar.

Gorey in County Wexford has lots of significance in my McSherry family who lived there for over 15 years. My great-grandparents Peter McSherry and Mary Callaghan were married there and their first two children were born there. It was from here that the family would leave for Australia in 1883, a year after Peter’s parents and siblings had also emigrated. James and Bridget McSharry (then Sherry) lived in the townland of Knockina. I’ve recently told the story of Bridget’s life here.

When I visited Gorey in the late 1980s, St Michael’s Catholic Church, was of course a focus. The priest was amazingly kind, and let us peruse the church registers to find the various family events. I wonder if there were any I missed due to lack of experience?

Gorey also has a high profile in Irish history being involved in the 1798 uprisings. I’ve not researched this in detail so will leave that to anyone with a specific interest. Rebelhand’s blog talks about the 1798 Wexford and family history.

I’m following some of my genealogy buddies on this A to Z voyage:

Julie at Anglers Rest who tempted me onto the A to Z path and is posting about her experiences in Australia and her Aussie genealogical connections.

From clker.com in public domain. Intended as a question about going green, it also represents my questions about where James Sherry came from, where he went.

Geniaus raised the Saturday challenged initiated by Thomas McEntee On his DestinationAustin Family Blog, which in turn revived Craig Manson of GeneaBlogie‘s meme from 2009. For today I’m going to focus on my “most wanted” family member and leave the surnames to Surname Saturday.

Ever since I started family history all those years ago, one ancestor has provided me with an “impenetrable” brick wall.

James Sherry is first identified in the “public” record in Tullamore, County Offaly (Kings County as it was then). On 21 May 1859 he married Bridget Furlong, a local girl from the townland of Shruagh, in the old Catholic Church, with witnesses John Horan and Maria Slavin.Their first two surviving sons, Peter and James Joseph, were also christened there, on the same date 29 May, in 1861 and 1865. Peter, is my direct ancestor. Their second-born son, Martin Sherry (named for Bridget’s father) was baptised in Arklow, Wicklow on 15 July 1863 with witnesses James and Margaret Halpin. Martin did not emigrate with the family and nothing is known about whether he died or remained in Ireland.

A typical Irish cottage at Knockina, complete with cat.

During their years in Arklow, James was workingas a ganger on the railway, presumably on the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford line. Several children were born and baptised in Arklow before the family moved to Gorey, Wexford where they settled for about 10 years. At the baptism of each child born in Gorey, the family states their townland as Knockina, just outside Gorey township. Having researched the Griffith Valuation revision lists for the period, it seems that the Sherry family must have been living in a caretaker’s cottage owned by the railway as all other properties are accounted for. This would suggest that James had reached some level of responsibility with the railway.

The interior of St Michael's Church, Gorey, Wexford 1992. Site of Sherry baptisms and Peter's marriage.

So far, so good, you’re wondering why I have a problem….after all I have quite a bit of information on them, thanks to the baptism of all those children. But there’s one thing missing – where did James come from and what’s his ancestry?Name distributions suggest he probably came from one of Ireland’s northern counties, possibly Monaghan, Fermanagh, or Meath. Dublin is also a strong contender but surely if he was from there one of his family would be a witness to at least one of the baptisms.

In 1882 James and Bridget Sherry emigrated to Queensland with all their children, except eldest son Peter. On arrival in January 1883, the family changed their name to McSharry, supposedly with the idea that he would ride on the coat tails of another James McSharry, the partner in O’Rourke & McSharry, railway construction contractors. If this was his goal, he certainly succeeded from one point of view. From that time forward my James McSharry cannot be readily identified. Despite the family’s horrendous luck with three children dying within a few years of arrival, James does not appear as the informant on any of the death certificates. By 1892, Bridget McSharry was listed in the post office directories as a boarding house keeper in Maryborough and later in Rockhampton, where she died in 1900. Had James died so that she needed to take up this work?

No problems, surely his death certificate can be found, and this will most likely tell us his place of origin and his parents’ names? Good theory, nil outcome. Despite searching around the country, this James McSharry/Sherry appears to have disappeared off the face of Australia at least. I’ve looked for him in Police Gazettes thinking he might appear there – if he had “done a runner” and left his wife with the children, they might have chased him for maintenance. Of itself this seems strange given they’d been married over 20 years and just made the tremendous decision to emigrate, but perhaps he hadn’t coped with the death of his children. I’ve searched cemeteries, inquest indexes and hospital admissions all to no avail. Trove throws up innumerable references to the construction company and even occasional documents found at the Archives remain ambiguous.

One clue appears when his daughter marries in Rockhampton in 1903, said to be the daughter of James McSharry, late of Sydney. Does that mean “recently of Sydney” or deceased…but I suspect it meant the latter. My suspicion is that it is a red herring to infer he may be the partner in McSharry & O’Rourke who was by then in Sydney. Searches of NSW death certificates were not forthcoming.

To confuse matters further this James’s eldest son, Peter, arriving in Queensland in early 1884 with his family, changed his name to McSherry and also joined the railway immediately. To this day, many of the leaves on this family’s branches do not know of the interconnection between the McSherry and McSharry families or indeed within some branches of either.

Did James emigrate to New Zealand or elsewhere to work on the railways? Did he return to Ireland? Did he die but never make it into the records? Was he admitted to a mental asylum somewhere? Was there some sort of scandal? Questions, questions!

My bet is that his father’s name was Peter Sherry and that he was probably born somewhere in Ireland’s northern counties. Searches at RootsIreland have been unproductive or inconclusive. Without some proof, or some clue about what happened to James, or where he went from Australia, this line is stone-walled.

Inspired by a post by Aillin at Australian Genealogy Journeys I had to give this a go, using Wordle to produce a cloud of my families’ names and places. Haven’t figured out how to deal with double-word places eg Charters Towers but it was fun.

Aussie Rockstar Genie

Unique visits from 25 August 2012

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